In recent years, controversies around ticketing scandals—from the Taylor Swift-Ticketmaster fiasco in the United States to the outrage around Oasis’ reunion tour in the UK—have revealed how dynamic pricing is reshaping live entertainment in ways that undermine fans, artists, and independent culture alike.
What corporations like Live Nation/Ticketmaster call “market efficiency” is, in reality, a mechanism to squeeze maximum profit from devoted audiences while locking out those without the means to pay inflated, algorithmically calculated ticket prices.
This growing trend is not just a debate about technology or pricing models: it is a battle over the future of culture. By transforming concerts, theatre, and sports into speculative commodities, vertically integrated ticketing giants are attempting to privatise what should be collective, accessible cultural moments. For Reset!, which stands to defend independent culture and the rights of artists, workers, and audiences against corporate monopolisation, the threat is clear: culture risks becoming an exclusive luxury for the few, rather than a shared experience for all.
Urging European Institutions to Take Action
This is why Reset! has signed the open letter to the European Commission calling for an explicit prohibition of dynamic pricing in the live entertainment sector within the forthcoming Digital Fairness Act. The letter—addressed to Commissioner McGrath responsible for Democracy, Justice, the Rule of Law and Consumer Protection—highlights the ways dynamic pricing exploits scarcity, emotional investment, and fans’ loyalty while deepening corporate control over cultural access. Initiated by the Euroconsumers Group, the letter was developed collectively with Live DMA, Reset!, and Football Supporters Europe, with the aim to highlight the threat that dynamic pricing poses both to culture and sports.
Rather than benefiting artists, athletes, or organisers, additional revenues are often captured by the same dominant intermediaries who already hold disproportionate power in the market. At its core, this struggle is about defending cultural scenes from enclosure by profit-driven monopolies.
Reset! rejects the commodification of our collective cultural moments, where the audience’s passion is treated as an asset to be extracted by opaque algorithms. We stand with the signatories of this letter in demanding that the European Commission acts decisively: banning dynamic pricing is then not only about consumer protection, but about safeguarding cultural democracy, ensuring access, and resisting the financialisation of art and entertainment.